NBA Coach Hot Seat Watch: Who will be the next coach fired?

NBA Head Coach Hot Seat Watch: No. 5 – Terry Stotts, Portland Trail Blazers

Terry Stotts has been the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers for nine seasons; only three coaches have been with their current team longer. Over that time the Blazers have won 51.4 percent of their regular season games and made the postseason in each of the last seven seasons.

Yet the playoffs last year came from a wild race through the NBA Bubble to barely sneak into the bottom of the playoff bracket, a bottom-rung that was lower than it has been in years. They went 34-40 before losing in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers.

This season Damian Lillard has been transcendent in crunch time, carrying the team to a 31-23 record which hides the fact that they have a negative point differential on the year. Injuries have hit Portland harder than many, with their second and third-best players going down for extended periods in CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic.

Yet at some point, the team has to wonder if a different head coach would be better to oversee the back-end of Lillard’s prime. Other teams have made such a move in recent years and seen success — the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors fired longtime coaches and saw immediate title runs. That is obviously not a guarantee for a team, but it could be an incentive for a team to make a move.

If Portland, now mostly healthy, can consolidate the rest of the season and hold serve at sixth in the West, avoiding the play-in game, that should be enough to earn Stotts another season. Yet a shaky end to the year, or a third playoff blowout in the last five seasons, could mean the team moves on. Stotts would likely get another job as soon as he wants it, but it is bitter to be fired all the same.